The described subject matter relates generally to the field of additive manufacturing. In particular, the subject matter relates to operating an energy beam to facilitate additive manufacturing.
Additive manufacturing refers to a category of manufacturing methods characterized by the fact that the finished part is created by layer-wise construction of a plurality of thin sheets of material. Additive manufacturing may involve applying liquid or powder material to a workstage, then doing some combination of sintering, curing, melting, and/or cutting to create a layer. The process is repeated up to several thousand times to construct the desired finished component or article.
Various types of additive manufacturing are known. Examples include stereo lithography (additively manufacturing objects from layers of a cured photosensitive liquid), electron beam melting (using a powder as feedstock and selectively melting the powder using an electron beam), laser additive manufacturing (using a powder as a feedstock and selectively melting the powder using a laser), and laser object manufacturing (applying thin solid sheets of material over a workstage and using a laser to cut away unwanted portions).
Many additive manufacturing processes utilize a scanning energy beam to fuse a fusible material. Scanning is commonly implemented in a raster scanning mode where a plurality of substantially parallel scan lines are used to form a layer of a complete article or section of an article. The parallel scan lines terminate along a contoured edge that is smoothed by applying the energy beam in a vector scanning mode along the contoured edge.